There's a layer of frost outside on the grounds turning everything pastel when I'd still been marvelling at the hot lushness of the fall colors, but in truth I'm glad.

I love Winter.

I love the downhill slope into Christmas, the small ledge of Thanksgiving. I have been away from the States for almost 6 years now, and Thanksgiving is something that I continue to celebrate, albeit on the last Saturday of the month and with people that come to enjoy the food and company, as opposed to having the day ingrained as a precious and much-loved holiday. I love the cold and I love the snow, and sometimes I find myself missing Stockholm and the cold clear crisp evenings walking the dog in the darkness. I miss the snow. I miss having a fireplace in the bedroom. I miss the dog.

But I am glad to be living in England.

The hardest part of Winter is when it slowly wakes up into Spring. When the boots are muddy and the days are confusingly just not warm enough to go jacketless. The daffodils may have sprung up, but daffodils are notoriously stupid and forget to put their mittens on. The side of the house lights up with electric wisteria, but it doesn't do it soon enough. The entrance into Spring is a host of impatience, but this time I will have something to keep my mind occupied.

This time, it will be IVF that watches the daffodils with me.

Suze asked the question about what this type of IVF I am doing is all about. It's a basic IVF cycle with a twist, basically. I will undergo the usual cycle, which starts off with a hormone suppressor. It's a nose spray that you have to take about twice a day, depending on the brand, and what it does is it sends your body into menopause. Your ovaries stop producing, the period stops. The worst part is, this is when you go crazy. You cry constantly, you have hot flashes and you sweat, you think everybody hates you and everything makes you angry or sad.

It's a horrible time.

The clinic will do a blood test, and once they see whatever it is that they are looking for, it's like throttling an engine out of reverse and into fast forward (all I can think about are Top Gun metaphors here and I'm in serious Tom Cruise dislike mode). You start daily injections in the stomach that send you hurtling out of menopause, while simultaneously issuing a wake up call for your sleepy ovaries.

You start producing eggs, as many as you and your clinic discuss is best for you or that you can do. My clinic worries about what is called hyper-stimulation (which the term itself? Yeah. It sounds like such a good thing, something you can have on a Friday night with a glass of wine and never need a man again), so they will cap me off at around 18-20. The clinic believes I was hyper-stimulated when I did IVF years ago, and they postulate it may be one of the reasons why I lost my babies. I try not to think about it,not at all, as the "what-ifs" can make me crumble. This egg production time shows a switch in the mood-you become very earth-mother like, your breasts swell, and each time you go in to have an ultrasound to count eggs, you allow yourself to dream more and more each time.

It's a dangerous time.

Once the eggs are fully developed, you take one last shot, a special shot that forces your eggs to develop follicles around them, which means that they are ready to be fertilized. They go in and remove them (in England they put you under general anesthetic, and all I can say is thank Christ they do that. The pain? Yeah, it's like waking up and having a colonoscopy up the wrong end.)

They mix the eggs with a milkshake of the partner's sperm (my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard), which has spun out all the little spermy dudes that would rather sit on the couch and watch football. The burgeoning embryos are watched and there's a grading scale for which ones can be implanted, which ones can be frozen, and which ones have to be thrown out. No more than two can be implanted back into the mom, and when the embryos look good, they are transferred back inside the woman and you have daily injections to try to make the uterus as homey a place as possible, a place where the egglets will want to hang up a sign that says "Home is Where the Placenta Is".

Then you wait. You make deals with religious deities. You take every single physical complaint as a sign. You will do fucking anything to make these babies a reality, you drink raspberry tea, you avoid long walks, you cry.

This next cycle is different, because while I am going through the nose sprays, another woman will be, too. She will be supressing her system, prohibiting it from producing eggs. When my ovaries are then stimulated to produce as many eggs as safely possible, her hormones continues to be supressed. Then, as we know how many eggs I will have, her body will start to take the nurturing uterus drugs. She will be getting her body ready to take eggs that, for whatever reason, her own body can't produce.

So say I produce 18 eggs. I will be giving her half my eggs, and she and her partner will fertilize them, check the quality, and return no more than two of the embryos (composed of my eggs and her partner's sperm) into her softly-lined duvet-covered uterus. From the moment she takes the eggs, those babies are hers. I have no claim to them, nor would I try to do so.

Angus and I will be working with my half of the basket of eggs. My remaining 9 eggs will have a wild date at the drive-in with Angus' sperm, and when they are tired of eating popcorn, they get put back inside of me. So there are two of us that will be going through the cycling together, although we are prohibited from meeting. All they will have of me is that green form that I still haven't figured out what to say on.

That, and hopefully, a baby.

So I watch the frost on the trees. I think about the darkness of December, of mince pies, Lucia Day, crumpled Christmas paper and candles. I think about January, with the cold promise every morning, the gingerbread lattes on hustling London streets. February has a holiday away with Angus and his kids, Valentine's Day, and the longest short 28 days.

And March? March smells of promise. March smells of sweaty prayers to gods and tears and nervous hand-holding. March smells of companionship, as another woman I will never meet goes through IVF with me, and takes half of my eggs so that she can have that baby of her dreams, too.

I think I'll start knitting those daffodil mittens now.

-H.

PS-the internal hemorrhoid is what's causing the bleeding, but now they're going to have to switch my medication, so the bleed may continue for some time. Thanks for the nice congratulations, but I have to ask-what the hell is a sitz bath?

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:44 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 1248 words, total size 7 kb.

1 I'm not sure this is accurate, now, because i never knew what a damn Sitz bath was either. But about five years ago, we went to a bathhouse in Hot Springs (shut up, we can't all go to Paris!), and the very nice lady there asked me, "And would you like a Sitz bath, too?" "Oh sure," I said, not wanting to ask her what a Sitz bath was, lest I look stupid. I'll tell you what looked stupid: Me, sitting in one. A Sitz bath turned out to be a goofy shallow butt-sized tub into which was poured very warm water. But like, nothing else of me was under water; just the pelvic girdle. It's supposed to feel "soothing," especially on the lower back. All I felt was "cold," because when only your tuchis is surrounded by warm water and the rest of you is just hanging out, it's like you're freezing to death. So I'm not a big fan of the Sitz. But keep in mind, I'm going off one experience in an Arkansas bathhouse, of all things. Take it with salt.

Posted by: ilyka at November 17, 2005 10:48 AM (c0ZqE)

2 I will keep my fingers crossed for both (or all four) of you.

Posted by: kenju at November 17, 2005 12:35 PM (+AT7Y)

3 Ah yes, the sitz bath. You can get a portable one that fits on your toilet. Nothing says relaxing like sitting on the toilet with your nethers in the aqua.

Posted by: Jim at November 17, 2005 12:55 PM (tyQ8y)

4 Hee hee... "Home is where the placenta is" That's hilarious!

Posted by: donna at November 17, 2005 02:02 PM (U1Lnv)

5 It is snowing-about 3 inches so far-here in Michigan, and I have never been so glad to see it. I have even begun to sing Christmas carols (Muppet Christmas anyone?). I know what you mean about Spring though-so hard to wait for the sunny days of summer. I think it is so beautiful and wonderful what you are doing, even if the process is not so fun-the end is worth the means. I have nothing but best wishes for all of you. March will indeed smell of promise-with every daffodil you see. I knit, and now for some reason I want to go knit mittens with daffodils on them. ;-) And sitz bath? Basically a "hip & butt" bath. For your specific ailment, you would sit in a bath tub filled with warm(or hot) water and only immerse your butt and pelvis. Everything else stays out of the water. The point is to get the blood flowing to that region and help relieve pain and discomfort. Cold sitz baths are usuallly for constipation and inflammation. My sister takes a lot of sitz baths(both hot and cold) due to her Crohns. She says they really help, so it might be worth a try.

Posted by: Teresa at November 17, 2005 02:16 PM (zf0DB)

6 oh boy, what a process! i've got my fingers and toes crossed. xox

Posted by: kat at November 17, 2005 04:27 PM (xJGrF)

7 You wrote: Your ovaries stop producing, the period stops. The worst part is, this is when you go crazy. You cry constantly, you have hot flashes and you sweat, you think everybody hates you and everything makes you angry or sad. Not so different from pregnancy. (Just an FYI. LOL) I'm soooo praying hard for you and your Angus, sweetness.

Posted by: Margi at November 17, 2005 05:11 PM (nwEQH)

8 I will now forever be unable to think about IVF without imagining you being implanted with something that looks like Egg Beaters.

Posted by: Lindsay at November 17, 2005 05:18 PM (pYXRq)

9 Egg Beaters! Sweet Jesus I haven't laughed like that in ages. Thank you, Lindsay

Posted by: Helen at November 17, 2005 06:01 PM (ac7Yg)

10 I love your impressions of winter and spring... just as I love the hope I hear in your "voice". We'll all be praying a lot come spring, Helen...

Posted by: sue at November 17, 2005 07:05 PM (WbfZD)

11 You 'sits' you down in a sitz bath. That's really all there is to it, and the hospital will usually have you in them post delivery.

Posted by: Jocelyn at November 17, 2005 07:09 PM (jkRb/)

12 When my doc recommended a sitz bath, I thought it was going to be a wonderful thing! Solve all my pain! But NO! You just sit in a couple of inches of water and feel stupid. I have NO CLUE why you can't just take a regular Big Bath and call it a day. Why two inches? I mean, is there a water shortage but only for ass problems? I don't get it. Next, please don't be freaked about Da Menopause. Like many things in life, it is often made out to be worse than it is, IMO. I'm having hot flashes and night sweats and my periods are yo-yo BIZARRE right now (Will I or won't I? This month or not? Should I buy tampons or "wing" it (get it? GET IT? heh) WHO KNOWS!) but my emotions are just as passionate and firey as they've ever been. The only difference is now I have a good excuse if I wanna go batshit. All those years in my 30's I had to make UP an excuse. Now I have a built-in one at any given time. Heh. Business as usual as far as I'm concerned. :-) So don't freak out about it. Take it as it comes. If you think you're over-reacting to something, you might be, but what else is new? Right? Stand tall, women with menopausal symptoms! We shall overcome! When we're not crying, that is. ;-P

Posted by: Amber at November 17, 2005 11:34 PM (zQE5D)

13 Thanks for that explanation - I'm not in the dark anymore!! Your little eggs will be quite busy - as will the little spermatodes. I'm going through menopause now - it's not THAT bad - and like your other commenter said - when I want to be irrational, I have a perfectly good reason.

Posted by: suze at November 18, 2005 01:33 AM (4uyw/)

14 Your writing warms me like honey swirling in tea... You have such amazing power with your words. I am in absolute awe, Helen.

Posted by: Dana at November 19, 2005 03:28 AM (b7OKi)

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